Draw Steel is the Name of the MCDM RPG

 You know what, that's pretty cool.

It's clear to me that Matt Colville and his employees/collaborators have a real affection to the stylized language of classic fantasy. The fact that their monster book was not something like "Magic Bestiary" or "Compendium of Monsters" but was instead "Flee, Mortals!" (I always try to include the exclamation point) really emphasizes the pulpy, over-the-top style that a somewhat subdued "Monster Manual" makes optional.

If you've ever watched Matt Colville's videos, he clearly lets his geekiness shine when he's reading fiction (either his own or when he's reading someone else's, like a passage from Dune).

Draw Steel (and boy it feels good to have an actual name for it) is jumping into some crowded waters - after the OGL fiasco, many longtime D&D 3rd party creators shifted gears toward making their own games, from Darrington Press' Daggerheart to Kobold Press' Tales of the Valiant, not to mention a "remaster" of Pathfinder second edition and other games beyond that (I've been seeing a lot of stuff about DC20 on YouTube, but I don't know if that's because it's actually gaining traction or because the YouTube algorithm has decided I would be into it). And, of course, there's WotC's own D&D revisions coming in just two months or so.

Two things make me more excited about Draw Steel than these others (well, barring the D&D revision).

One is pedigree. Matt Colville's Running the Game (and later, Designing the Game) videos have been really insightful and interesting. Even if I don't always agree with Colville's philosophy on game design (I'm still not convinced that fantasy RPGs like D&D are inherently better as short, self-contained adventures) I still think that his opinions are arrived at based on real thought and consideration, and that thoughtfulness is something I respect. Colville has strong opinions (something I think was better-reinforced for Gen Xers, whereas as a Millennial I feel I was trained to always couch my opinions in qualifications that allowed for other perspectives) but I feel like he's someone you could have a really interesting friendly argument with.

And all that philosophical introspection on the design gave us Flee, Mortals, a book that really made me re-think how monsters should work, and how the design of them can make for exciting encounters without forcing the DM to come up with some clever hook.

The second reason is that Draw Steel is doing something audacious: they're attempting to create a competitor to D&D that focuses on the element of that venerable game that most people think is its strongest, namely the combat.

But while I understand and to some extent am glad that the 2024 D&D rulebooks will be backwards compatible with older 5E content, I'm also really excited about how the entire ethos, it seems, of creating Draw Steel has been to toss out anything that doesn't work to make the game more fun. In almost diametric distinction from D&D '24/5.5E, this is a game that took such basic assumptions as "I have to roll to hit" and tossed them out the window.

In a lot of ways, the existence of Draw Steel is actually making me more satisfied with the conservative approach that WotC has taken to their 5.5E - WotC is focusing on making sure that, while the game improves, it's still going to be very familiar to your players.

Draw Steel is going to require players to learn a very different rules system.

And yet, at least what I've seen so far, it doesn't seem like it's going to get overwhelming in its granularity. Colville and lead designer James Introcaso have talked a lot about making sure that players aren't overwhelmed with choices to make at character creation. A 1st level Draw Steel character is going to be a bit more complex than a 1st level D&D character, but it doesn't look like they'll be much more complex than a 3rd level D&D character (and with only 10 levels in Draw Steel, that's nearly an equivalent level anyway).

Ultimately, this post is just about celebrating the fact that they've finally announced the fucking name of the game, but I've got to say I'm pretty hyped to see this getting closer to becoming real.